How can a person of this apparent age maintain such idealism.

^It is possible. Throw away your t.v., be selective in what media you access and surround yourself with like-minded people. Works for me, at least.

Haven't had a TV for years, the fact that I'm a sifter means i am the MOST discriminating media user, and my friends are saints. The powerlessness to make the world the place you, me and Neale want it to be is crushing sometimes.

I like the fancy furniture and candelabra in the background while he discusses the injustice of the distribution of resources.

This guy is New-Age icon(nutjob) glad we don't have *newage.

Did anyone else just get a déjà vu to Deus Ex 2? Anyway, sure it's idealism but it's a very pertinent philosophical question. At the very least what is it that isolates us from experiencing wider empathy. Is it purely a biological issue or does the environment also play a significant influencing factor?

I had a similar reaction to:

http://www.videosift.com/video/Derrick-Jensen-Modern-Day-Slavery

Yes, it's a very pertinent philosophical question, but I'd like there to be some ideas about workable solutions to address the inequity without getting all Marxist and stuff.

stuff like this is always preaching to the converted. The selfish don't share because they don't want to - just like a toddler they have to be forced to do so because reasoning with them doesn't work. The concept that "we are one" simply doesn't fly with them because it incorporates the concept of the future - after you die, in fact - which selfish people especially refuse to think about. If you can get people to stop being afraid of death and loneliness, you can get people to consider what happens on earth after they are gone.Once they care about life beyond their own time, then the idea of sharing isn't so terrible.

And me personally, I think he misspeaks; it's not "we are one" it's "we are strands of a tapestry - pull one and eventually the whole thing will shred" and although he says it's not economics, he's wrong. It IS economics. Economics is all people ultimately. Economics is a tapestry too and each person is a thread in it. Just like government and all other aspects of society.

I like your analogy of the tapestry, smibbo, I have also used this, in attempting to explain the role of religion in society. I don't think he misspeaks, 'tho. It can be a rare moment for me, but I have experienced glimpses of the concept and I know many others do too.

Moments which have lead me to see life objectively, bring me closer to others. There's the sense that we're all in the same boat.

Meditation helps, so does taking long walks alone. Sometimes, walking around, I get a really strange sense of seeing myself in others, as if I was them, at different stages in my life, that I have either already or not yet lived. I think this is the start of the kind of awareness that he's talking about.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

For me it comes down to nature/nurture. Are humans hard-wired for selfishness? Do we require the invisible hand of the market economy to keep things going? I hope not - but then Marx, Lenin, Guevera etc hoped not too. They also believed in the "oneness" of the people.

The experiment of communism failed precisely because human nature climbed into their beautiful machine and gummed up the works. Dachas on the black sea, Zil limos for party cronies. So much for "to each according to their needs".

I'm not a communist - but the abject failure of communism really depresses me. I'm waiting for the robots to take over- we need to take humans and our selfish, monkey-brains out of the equation.